The Oakland Mayor's Race is both over and heating up yet again. First, big congratulations to now-former Oakland Councilmember and Oakland Mayor-Elect Jean Quan, who won the Ranked Choice Voting mayoral election by 50.98 percent to 49.02 for Former State Senator Don Perata. This after all absentee and provisional ballots were counted today by the Alameda County Registrar of Voters, Wednesday.
Jean becomes Oakland's first female and first Asian mayor. That, alone, is massively cool.
The outcome has rankled the Perata Campaign, which has put out strong signals that it plans to file a lawsuit to have the vote count "reconsidered."
As Perata Campaign Manager John Whitehurst has said to the media
"It's a travesty that a candidate that wins 78 percent of the precincts and leads by more than 11,000 votes (after first-choice votes are counted), with a margin of nearly 10 percent, loses the election. In any other contest it would be a landslide win, not an election loss. Ranked-choice voting is an injustice, and Oakland will pay the price."
But that's the media spin, and add to that the Perata camps assertion that Don won "all of the African American precincts." The Perata Campaign and supporters are putting out all of the signs that point to only one conclusion: a lawsuit.
None of my sources would deny that possibility. Moreover, the Perata camp is issuing a press release that contains a blog post from Lance Williams that, until now, has not been mentioned in any of the media coverage.
The title of the blog post says it all: "
Confusion about Oakland’s voting system may have affected election." And these three paragraphs are key to its message:
One out of every 10 Oakland voters showed signs of confusion about how to vote for mayor using the city’s new ranked-choice voting procedure, according to a computer analysis of returns obtained by California Watch.
The confusion was so great that it may have flipped the final results of the extraordinarily tight mayor’s race between former state Senate leader Don Perata and city council member Jean Quan, the analysis shows....
More than 5 percent of voters marked the same candidate for their first, second and third choices, the analysis shows. But a voter can only vote for a candidate once, so for these 4,900 voters those second and third choices went uncounted.
The other factor upsetting the Perata campaign is that Quan and Councilmember Kaplan openly "gamed" the Rank Choice System. Now, from this blogger's perspective, not making voting deals with the other campaigners was a massive error. The Perata Campaign should have fought fire with fire, but openly chose not to do so. The result is Jean Quan wins, but in doing so sets a dangerous precedent for future Oakland elections.
Now, Jean's the target, and if she does not do well as Mayor (which I personally don't think will be the case because I'm going to be on her 24 and 7), the same voting games that got her in, will be the ones that cause her to be out in four years.
That written, Quan
can be a great Mayor of Oakland - perhaps the best we've had for a host of reasons I will get into later. It will be exciting to see what she does. Installing a new Chief Administrative Officer to replace Dan Lindheim will be her first major official action.
Mayor-Elect Quan Does Not Have A Mandate
With all of this, Mayor-Elect Quan must be sure to realize that she does not have a mandate; she did not score the majority of popular votes. That should be of concern for her. The Mayor-Elect must - and I think will - be open to people. Moreover, Jean must - and this can't be overstated - develop a very thick skin. She must work to jettison the idea that people who criticize her aren't in her corner. Not so. She's Mayor of Oakland, now, and that means she's got a PR-issue to deal with every day.
As Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris told me, "Zennie, there are a thousand games you can play in City Hall every day. The question is which one you should play?" What Elihu was saying to me is you always have to watch your back, figure out where the arrows are coming from, and then have a plan to strike back, if it's worth doing so. If you have the right temperament , the game's fun. Jean's got to develop that to be successful.
But that's all to come. Right now, the Perata camp is seething.
Stay tuned.
